Quotes from Nicola Griffith

Sometimes she swung a stick sword: she had learnt long since that it made him happy for her to pretend to be Branwen the Bold, just as it made her happy for him to be still when she was watching and listening.

His rookies had once been more than entries in a ledger, cogs in his cost-effectiveness machine. I tried to remember the last time I had seen him shout or laugh. I failed. Twenty years in the police force had killed everything, bit by bit: his ambition, thin his passion, then his wife.

As the sun went down and left candlelight wavering over brow and throat, wrist and mouth, it seemed for a moment that they could be almost the same age: two women enjoying a conversation.

Hidden in the leafy canopy, sometimes she stayed so still and quiet even the birds forgot she was there.

Perhaps she wasn't as good at it as he was. He cut too deep.

All she heard was a blackbird, far away, and the burble of the spring. She wondered where the water came from. She wondered this in British, the language of wild and secret places.

She looked him in the eye, the eyes she'd seen wide with lust, not with tears, shining with joy.

Hild looked down at the water, at herself, a woman. A woman who knows. Standing like a queen. Light of the world. Queen of the world.

To Marghe, unused to so much ale, it seemed that Uaithne's lair flamed with violent thoughts.

How did Begu always make simple things seem so slippery?

They were good travelling companions. Llanza had lived half his life in the saddle and Nimuë had journeyed far and often. Both were easy with each other, and after a while Peretur found her rhythm with them.

A sword given to his hand by a king: a shield and a path.

The girl could tell he did not like this man whose business was the uncanny.

We both love her, as we love each other. We will not set her aside.

The green grass of Gwynedd was a better way to end than blind agony in a dark, close room.

A gift. From a king. To her as the light of the world. What should she do?

There were advantages to being ignored by the king.

You've made more of a life here in three weeks than you've done in five years in Atlanta. I only wonder that you've managed to hide from the obvious for so long. This place is ideal for a Norwegian who isn't really Norwegian anymore. It positively reeks of Scandanavia, all clean and shiny and Americanized full of rules that people obey with a smile when it pleases them and break with a smile when it doesn't. Ideal for you.

Autumn blew, leaves fell, flames flickered, and song turned to war.

The shadows around her loomed longer and darker. She didn't know what her light was.

Her own sea-grey with green to his sea-green with grey.

She could have taken her sexual energy and smoothed it down, but she wanted to let it burn through her, she wanted to enjoy being alive.

Artos, she thought. A king. In Caer Leon. The words rang in her head like a bell, like a scent of the lake, like the bright clean shimmer of the Companions.

Money shouldn't frighten people. It's a tool. A very versatile one.